Musings from Brian J. Noggle

Didn’t get the point of the Rent-A-Negro.com Web site that I mentioned? In the Chicago Tribune, Clarence Page explains it (registration required).

He makes some points about blackness-as-phenomenon I am not sure I would agree with, though.

Of course, I am not <insert thing I am not here>, so I couldn’t understand.

Looks like Madonna has fallen from her bicycle.

Heather, it could happen to you!

Well, not exactly, since you don’t drink coffee while riding. I guess you’re safe.

(I saw it on Fark first.)

According to the Sunday edition of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, unemployment is undercounted because:

It does not count the substantial number of Americans who have gone back to school because they can’t find a job or those who have taken a part-time job for much less pay. It does not include people who, unable to find work, have set themselves up in businesses, many as home-based consultants.

That’s right, the official unemployment numbers do not include students or people who are employed.

Also not represented in the numbers, experts (in technical writing, and by “experts” I mean I) also point out that official unemployment does not include homemakers who know raising children is a full-time job, thousands of registered and active Chicago voters who happen to be deceased, dozens of fetuses, dogs and cats who have obtained credit cards, illegal migrant farm workers who have returned to their points of origin, and Canadians.

By the time you add it up, the number actually exceeds the population of the United States. That’s right, unemployment has skyrocketed to 135%. We need block grants, stat! Please send the government checks to Brian J. Noggle, care of this Web site.

What do you get the billionaire who has everything, including a fighter jet and a special disposition to land planes at his rural airport at night? How about his own aircraft carrier?

He’ll probably drop the $4.5 million on this WWII-era (but in use until recently by the Brazillian Navy) carrier. He’ll expense it, of course, as part of his long term rearming so that Oracle can retake its rightful position as database market leader, by force if necessary, from IBM.

(Thanks to /. for the pointer.)

Now that I am well on the way to recovery from the bruises on my chin suffered when I was astonished by Harley Soandso’s column about Chris Hedges on SFGate.com (seven prepositional phrases in a clause! A new blog personal best!), I can reason out what bothered me about this assertion:

Yet the Rockford incident had a chilling aspect to it. As described in the press, it could well have been a scene out of the recent miniseries on the rise of Hitler to power in Nazi Germany.

The difference between the many incidents at Berkeley and the Rockford incident is that, at Berkeley, it’s usually the rabble against an Establishment spokesperson. At Rockford, it was just the opposite; the incident had the feel of a government protest against an outsider.

America has been called the Republic of Many Mansions (based on the biblical quote from John 14:2). The Carmody text (The Republic of Many Mansions) posits that America has a lot of (mostly Christian) strains in its religious thought. Different denominations and whatnot. The paragraph represents a long, albeit annotated, description of how I decided to frame my thesis for this posting, which is:

America is a republic of many establishments, and hence a lot of wide-eyed innocent strugglers against the oppressive established regime (or jackbooted hooligans, if you’re in the establishment being assailed at the immediate time of assailing).

For instance, from Sorensen’s perspective, Chris Hedges and his points of view, shared by his colleagues at many established dailies and chic alternative weeklies, represent the Wide-Eyed Innocent (or perhaps slightly jaundiced and worldly) Struggler Against the Oppressive Regime (WEISAOR for not-very-short). The Rockford College graduates and their families represent Tools of The Man (ToTM). Because, you see, Hedges was speaking against an Establishment, namely the 3-year-old presidential administration and the recent Republican-controlled Congress, a decisive foreign policy, and whatever handy straw men he could set up regarding these. (Certainly, he was not speaking against the republican form of government itself, where the hoi polloi pick the leaders whom the rabble think will best represent it.)

However, to some with a different point of view, Chris Hedges represents an Establishment of a different sort. The Established Coastal Media, which postures to represent the People and wants to dictate how The People thinks. Not by force, of course, but because ECM thinking is right and dissenters will be mocked and looked down upon. However, to some, ECM represents the Oppressive Established Regime (OER), or at least a bunch of out-of-touch twits. So sometimes, the local (or imported) WEISAOR makes a little noise.

America offers a good number of institutions against which anyone can play David. The Church (which cam be any of a handful of small Christian denominations or the Catholics), The Military Industrial Complex, the Gummint, Congress, the Republican Party, the Democratic Party, Corporations, Big Tobacco, Big Oil, the Automakers, the Unions, and so on and so on and scooby dooby doo-bee.

So dividing the country into Establishment/Rebel fails because Establishments and their Oppressive Regimes are too prevalent to be noteworthy, and so is rebellion. Rebellion has always been a part of growing up. The adolescent differentiates from the parents through rebellion. Pop culture latched onto this particular part of growing up and has idolized it, super-sized it, and apothesized it (probably because teething is such an individual agony, and not good cinema). Once the new rebels got the parents out of the way, they decided to take on The Man, and they keep finding another The Man to take on. Even I define myself in opposition to some things, rebelling against the oppressive regime who thinks I should mow my back lawn before it goes to seed. Join me this afternoon for a protest against it.

So Sorensen’s gone off into victimics when shrilling about his WEISAORs representing “the rabble against an Establishment spokesperson” while the opposing WEISORs represent “a government protest against an outsider.” We’re all outsiders in the establishment.

A ninety minute porn film has a six page script. Drop that nugget into conversation mysteriously-but-knowingly sometime.

It’s better if you don’t mention you learned it from Business 2.0.

Although its fifth paragraph acknowledges that workplace safety has improved significantly in the past, this article in the Washington Post laments how dangerous it is in workplaces these days, especially jobs where you don’t get to surf the Internet or talk on the phone all day.

Not content to examine how some jobs are really hazardous, the WaPo brings it home to the white collar and near-white collar employees by telling them how some formerly safe jobs are now DANGEROUS! Suddenly, the world of terrorism, workplace violence, and new super-cool, super deadly diseases like AIDS and SARS are intruding on the workday world, and surprise, surprise, surprise, but employers are choosing not to emphasize the inherent dangers of modern life and how they apply to an above minimum wage but below “living wage” jobs.

Seems to me that the movie Article 99 covered that in 1992. The trailer depicted an angry disabled veteran chambering a round in a semiautomatic rifle as he and his comrades chained each other togethter to protest the cutting of their benefits by the ruthless Republican administration of the era. A hospital administrator tells the army of renta-cops, “Disarm that man!” The rent-a-cop replies, “Not for $5.50 an hour.” So you see, the WaPo scooped by an obscure Keifer Sutherland film.

Perhaps the WaPo forgets the days when people died on the job, or Heaven forbid, drank beer while operating industrial machinery on the job, or when children were used because they could crawl into or under the enormous, steam-belching, coal-fed machines. Instead, going to work is in many cases not much more dangerous than going to the mall, but since it’s not padded with comfortable, non-toxic foam padding, it’s still too dangerous, and someone should do something!

Fox News reports that the major parties, in particular the Republicans, are having tough times finding candidates for office.

If the Libertarians can field strong candidates, and by strong candidates I mean “not the usual crackpots,” perhaps they could win a statewide or national (legislative) election. If only they could field candidates who have a firm grasp not only of the Libertarian platform, but how to explain the platform and its benefits for common Americans without resorting to broadsides against prevailing authority and sounding like they’re one rock away from an anarchist, maybe the Libertarians could have a shot.

The blogomockracy is full of able-minded individuals with predilections toward libertarianism. Will any of us hear the call, or are we to wedded to our high-paying blog careers to make the leap into public service?